Clinton Assails GOP ‘Contract’ as Fraud : Campaign: President rips into Republican Party chief, says plan targets Social Security. After Minnesota stop, he flies to Southern California.

President Clinton turned up the volume of his attacks on Republican leaders Friday, saying that they are “playing to the worst instincts of the American people.”

In comments to reporters here, Clinton personally scored GOP Chairman Haley Barbour, calling the GOP’s Contract With America a fraud that promises a balanced budget and increased defense spending while lowering taxes on most Americans.

Clinton charged that the Republican plan would cost Social Security recipients $2,000 a year and “devastate” virtually every government program.

Barbour, in a series of television ads and interviews this week, has denied that his party is planning to cut Social Security or shut down the government. But he has not yet spelled out how the party would pay for its promises.

Clinton said the only way that Republicans can finance their pledges is by destroying the economy.

“Of course, there’s always the possibility that Haley Barbour’s right--they’re just going to deliver the goodies and forget about paying for them, in which case, you go right back to the 1980s, exploding deficits, shipping our jobs overseas, putting our economy in the ditch,” Clinton said.

Later Friday, Clinton--who has been campaigning for endangered Democrats across the country this week--flew to Southern California, landing at Los Alamitos Naval Air Station.

The President was met by 250 McDonnell Douglas Corp. employees as well as California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and Robert Hood, president of McDonnell Douglas.

Clinton told the McDonnell Douglas employees, many of whom waved American flags, that the company’s $1.6-billion agreement with the Chinese government to build 40 jetliners, signed Friday, “is a part of our ongoing effort to expand . . . and to maintain jobs in the United States.”

Clinton Administration officials helped negotiate the deal, which calls for half of the McDonnell MD-80 and MD-90 jetliners to be built in China and the remainder in the United States.

Clinton was to address a rally in downtown Los Angeles on Friday night and will speak to the Assn. of Realtors at the Anaheim Convention Center this morning before flying to Oakland.

The President campaigned in Minnesota for U.S. Senate candidate Ann Wynia, who is in a close race with freshman Republican Rep. Rod Grams for the seat now held by retiring Republican Sen. Dave Durenberger.

Democrats consider Minnesota to be their best shot at stealing a seat now in GOP hands, and recent polls show the race to be a virtual dead heat.

Clinton spoke on Wynia’s behalf in a field house on the campus of the University of Minnesota at Duluth, praising the former majority leader of the Minnesota Legislature as “more of a doer than a talker.”

Friday’s appearance here was the second time he has come to Minnesota for Wynia, and he is planning a third visit here Monday as he tries to keep the Senate in Democratic hands.

In an interview with San Francisco television station KGO on Friday, Clinton said he has been campaigning in the East, the upper Midwest and the far West this week because “I’m going where I think I can do the most good.”

Clinton has avoided the South, the Plains states and the Rocky Mountain region, where his presence is thought to do Democratic candidates more harm than good.

Clinton maintained that he has not completely avoided the South, a region particularly hostile to the President.

He traveled to Miami last month to campaign for Hugh Rodham, the First Lady’s brother, who is waging a hopeless campaign for the Senate seat of popular Republican incumbent Connie Mack.